Ongoing Projects

Columbus Hub Academy was launched few months ago and it’s already on the move. More than 200 academics registered and several projects at different stages: proposal, negotiation, implementation. Here you will find a short information on the projects at the implementation stage.

This project involves undergraduates of marketing at the University of Aveiro, Portugal and undergraduates in international business from the University of Colima, Mexico.

The starting point of collaboration is a case study proposed by Professor Claudia M. Prado-Meza "Sal Cuyutlán in search of the European market," which will be resolved by Mexican students. Their ultimate goal is to develop an exportation business plan for the Cooperative Society Salineros of Colima, the leading producer of salt Cuyutlán. The tasks to be performed by Mexican students include a proposal to expand the marketing channels of the Company.

Portuguese students will act primarily as digital marketing consultants, in order to help their counterparts from Colima to choose the best way to integrate digital channels in the international business strategy that they intend to implement. Moreover, the Portuguese Students will develop a plan of e-marketing, and create a website project for the internationalization of the Company.

Students of both parties will participate in video conferences in order to exchange information and consult with peers during week 2 of the project. Then the teams exchange information when required by email or in the group have created within the Hub platform Columbus Academy. At the end of the process, teams of Portugal, will create a proposal video, which will be shared with partners. This video will explain the project website they have created. Mexican students will be invited to evaluate proposals anonymously video and web site projects. Portuguese teacher will note any such evaluations to give extra points for the final evaluation of students.

Project: Introduction to the Economy of the public sector: a comparative vision Mexico vs Argentina

This project is developed by professors from the University of Colima in Mexico and the University of Litoral in Argentina, in the courses of Introduction to Economics and Integrative Workshop Economic System. It proposes the development of skills for the comparative analysis of the economies of public sector in Mexico and Argentina. In groups of undergraduates level students, Argentinians and Mexicans with an average age of 18, will develop an essay on the status of public finances in Mexico and Argentina, considering theoretical elements presented by the teachers on the economies of both countries through multiple shared virtual classes.

Under a tutorials scheme, teachers will guide the advancement and development of the work that students develop with their peers in the partner university. In order to make formal their work, students will communicate asynchronously and at the end they will provide further verbal support, also they will present the outcomes with the participation of all the other students. The results of the work will be available previously to the final session, so that all the other groups can prepare their comments.

Besides the content elements that enhance the same survey of the economy under a methodology of comparative analysis in two Latin American countries, students will test their skills of inquiry and research, teamwork and negotiation but also of their verbal and written communication in a context involving international students and teachers.

Project: Attracting tourists from the generation of "millennials" to the cities of Cartagena and Aveiro.

This project is being developed by the University of Aveiro in Portugal, and Technological University of Bolivar in Colombia. They offer to students of courses in digital marketing and market research undergraduate level, a case to test their skills as strategists and researchers. Teachers involved have proposed them an interesting development context: worldwide, the new kind of tourists, "millennials", are an increasingly important segment, which are attracting attention and efforts of tourism managers. This is particularly important target market for digital marketing strategies, given that millennials are experienced and intensive social media networks and users.

This project aims to propose effective measures to attract the "millennials" strategies tourists to two destinations: Aveiro and Cartagena. Both Tourist Offices (Corpoturismo of Cartagena and Tourism Aveiro) try to increase the number of tourists using an effective strategy of e-marketing. Those two destinations have some interesting similarities, but they are almost ignored by their counterparts. In fact, the Colombian tourists who frequently visit Spain, rarely visit Portugal. Similarly, the Portuguese tourists are frequent in Brazil, rarely visit the neighboring country of Colombia. One question that both tourist offices want to explore is whether this cultural proximity to a neighboring country is a competitive advantage or disadvantage. Therefore, they have decided to study the preferences and habits of Portuguese tourists and Colombians, focusing on the millennium generation.

The project aims students from Cartagena to develop market research, and the Portuguese plan e-marketing, so that the first group support the design and development of strategies to raise by the latter; in the same way Portuguese help with data collection work in Portugal, for example, by promoting the online survey within their networks. In order to explore the international nature of the project, attention will focus on the cooperation of teams throughout the learning process, exchange of knowledge and experience, as well as analysis of the similarities and differences between the two destinations, and the two group of tourists.

This is a joint initiative of the School of International Business at the Faculty of Economics and Administration Sciences of the University of Valparaiso - Chile and the program of Finance and International Business from the Faculty of Economics and Business at the Technological University of Bolivar, Colombia. The main aim is to enhance cooperation among students to generate business opportunities between both countries.

Students, as external advisors at each country, will require to do analysis and review of Chile free trade agreement with Colombia in order to identify good opportunities of business in both countries. Chilean students are following the undergraduate’s courses of Business Simulation and Colombian ones, Policy and Economic Integration.

This project offers the possibility students to develop skills of research, data collection and analysis, development of related, correlated, supplemented models, work with international peers, and comparative analysis between two countries. The collaboration has been designed students can interact through synchronous and asynchronous way, using the groups of the Columbus Hub Academy and Zoom platform for videoconferencing.

Project: Language Attitudes

Universities: Universidad de Belgrano, Argentina and University of Bern, Switzerland.

Number of students: Universidad de Belgrano 16 & University of Bern 20

Working dates: September– October 2016

Languages of collaboration: English

The project aims to explore speakers’ attitudes towards the variety of English spoken in London as a multilingual and multicultural hub. The Argentinian students will look at how sociolinguistic representations of London English are depicted in social media, and the Swiss students will conduct face-to-face interviews with speakers in London to find out their perceptions of and attitudes to this particular variety.

The students will share and compare the information gathered by means of email and video conference communication, as part of English Language Studies courses at undergraduate level of Universidad de Belgrano and postgraduate students of Sociolinguistics at University of Bern.

Through the interaction with peers its expected students to develop their communicative and analytical skills by sharing and discussing issues pertaining to the complexities surrounding the relationship between language, culture and society. As a final product the students will be asked to put together a report detailing their findings.

Get some inspiration for your first project!

We share here other initiatives of online international collaborative projects developed by members/friends of Columbus and COIL-SUNY.